Teal Bunbury

As just about anyone who cares to know knows, Major League Soccer has a major sister-kissing problem. Hell, the Chicago Fire’s already well around second base, but more than a few other teams – my Portland Timbers among them – well, let’s just say they’re grasping at all the wrong bra straps. Look outside the nuclear family, boys, and chalk up some decent, American wins. Ya sickos…

This has been commented on and, fortunately, there is an upside. Those ties are a fucking god-send when your team is struggling to get started. At least one team comes to mind…with hope’s wings a-flutter over it.

A couple other thoughts occurred to me over this past Week 7, things that don’t fit neatly into the team-by-team narrative that will unfold below. On that, I quit Power Rankings cold turkey (seems to be the only way), so don’t read anything into the order below; I listed all 19 teams in the order that they came to me. And that’s it. I’ll make my measure of them in the comments (and why the hell do I sound like a late 19th-century prospector tonight?).

Getting back to those trends, how many teams are suffering from lost gambles on certain forwards to solve the problem? Think Eddie Johnson, Teal Bunbury, and, more recently, Andrew Wenger (no, I will not give him time to get going). There are more, I’m sure. What about the struggles of once/former stars like Marco DiVaio, who has failed to get going so far, or even Will Bruin who promised so very much….though that was in one game…maybe we all should have seen that coming.

Blows came to a couple reputations in Week 5. Big questions dog the Houston Dynamo and the New England Revolution, but the shine also came off the Columbus Crew a little. Going the other way, did Toronto FC just move to the “cool kid” table? Some things didn’t change, however. I mean, who beats the Colorado Rapids when it comes to pulling a surprise out of an ass? And the LA Galaxy made it look easy against Chivas USA. Again.

The rest looks like the usual inconclusive mess. We probably won’t know anything until everyone jumps into their respective playoff brackets at the end of October (I assume; not looking it up). Or they make plans for an extended Christmas visit. That starts in November…maybe some team will do use the favor of doing something to encourage bold predictions. That will inevitably prove wrong.